


Brighter Than Gold!

by scalphunter



Category: Star Trek: Alternate Original Series (Movies), Star Trek: Into Darkness - Fandom, st:xii
Genre: Always Female Kirk, Author Is Sleep Deprived, Gen, I Don't Even Know, Jamie Tabitha Kirk, The Author Regrets Nothing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-30
Updated: 2014-01-30
Packaged: 2018-01-10 13:09:13
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,945
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1160100
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/scalphunter/pseuds/scalphunter
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Opening her eyes to that bright white cleanliness of a private Federation hospital bay Jamie turned her head to see her Chief Medical Officer standing by her bedside. </p><p>Jamie Kirk wakes up after 'dying' in the chamber. It only gets more complicated from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Brighter Than Gold!

**Author's Note:**

> I don't know, I wrote this at stupid hour in the morning, after watching Into Darkness and I just thought about if Kirk had always been a girl, how different would her relationships/friendships be from the AOS canon?
> 
> Disclaimer: I don't own Star Trek, it belongs to Gene Roddenberry and J. J Abrams. (Jamie Kirk is my own creation on the genderswap idea - Rule 62)

Opening her eyes to that bright white cleanliness of a private Federation hospital bay Jamie turned her head to see her Chief Medical Officer standing by her bedside and looking his usual grumpy but competent self; the expression familiar since the academy and the number of fist fights Kirk had gotten herself into.

‘You were barely dead, it was the transfusion that really took its toll. You were in a coma for two weeks’ McCoy said running a scanner over her eyes. She blinked tiredly. Her brain caught up with his words. The chamber. The radiation. Spock. The Enterprise in free fall. Her crew. Khan.

 

_‘I'm scared, Spock... help me not to be... how do you choose not to feel?’_

_‘I do not know. Right now I am failing’_

_‘I wanted you to know why I couldn't let you die... why I went back for you...’_

_‘Because you are my friend’_

The strength she had thought she suddenly acquired left her body at the speed of warp 8. Jamie had watched her unflappable First Officer cry on the other side of the glass door, his hand pressed against the glass. She mirrored the Vulcan salute as best she could and breathing was nearly impossible.

She was dying – she died. She felt it all leave; the shuddering calmness was nothing like her previous exploits that involved her blacking out. This had been different. Kirk had gone into that chamber in order to die and save her crew. She kicked the core for each person on board the Enterprise she had failed and put in mortal danger – the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few. Seeing a group of Yeoman fall, screaming to their deaths, she had made up her mind.

A Captain must go down with her ship to save it.

Somehow, she had cheated death, and she focused her gaze on her CMO from her pillow.

‘Transfusion?’ she questioned, a curl of cold winding in her chest at what he was implying. He wasn’t – they didn’t -

‘Your cells were heavily irradiated. We had no choice’ he was talking as if letting her die was never an option, of course it was!

‘Khan?’ she asked, already knowing the answer.

‘We synthesized a serum from his... ‘super’ blood. Tell me, are you feeling homicidal, power-mad, despotic?’ and at that Jamie had at smile, even if it was weak, hoping it conveyed as much as she needed it to.

Bones was her anchor, the old-country soul, never failing to make Jamie laugh and treat her with as much respect and resigned fondness while everybody else saluted and stood to attention. There had been a time at Starfleet, she walked across campus in the cold, rainy weather to Bones’ dorm only to find he’d pulled a late shift and she couldn’t be bothered to hack his door open. So she slumped against the wall and tapped out a message on her palm PADD, letting him know she where she was. She didn’t expect him to turn up at his own apartment mid shift, a scowl ever present, and haul her up off the floor.

‘No more than usual’ she replied and the hint of a smirk pulled at the Doctor’s features. Even through the need for sleep, she could make out the wariness under his eyes.

 

 

Recovery was a ridiculous word to use given the circumstances but Jamie was on her way to it. Once she was able on her feet she wanted to on the bridge again and, well, the Federation weren’t very well not going to give her ship back. She heard, through Sulu, that Spock’s captaincy while taking the Enterprise home and transporting Jamie, left much to be desired. This all said in Sulu’s derisive tone obviously, Spock never once sat in the Captain’s chair. He stood by the side in his First Officer position the entire time.

Bones rolled his eyes as Jamie fiddled with a silver model of the _Enterprise_ with sat on the tiny ledge of her room.

‘Where did this even come from?’ she asked, twirling it with her only free hand. It wasn’t likely it was part of the Federation Care Package For Captains.

‘Chekov’ Bones replied simply as though that should be enough, and in some respects it was, nevertheless Jamie snapped her eyes to the CMO.

‘When?’ she demanded and Bones’ shoulders tightened. ‘Everyone came to visit when you were asleep. Uhura, Chekov, Sulu, Spock, Scotty. And ensigns from Engineering and the Bio-Labs I think. Doubt you were alone for any long lengths at a time’. Jamie dropped the model onto her lap and averting staring down at it, feeling sick.

‘Just don’t ask Chekov where he found it. I had to listen to the story. It takes about 40 minutes to explain’ Bones said and Jamie laughed, the sickness in her stomach lessening and then twisting up as she realised how much she missed her crew. She could picture them all so clearly, but in her head those happy, professional (if not completely whacky) faces morphed into terror and wide worried eyes and so sleep became harder to cope with. There were nights when she remembered Chris' death; a great man who had been a father figure to her all those years, who didn't hasten to reprimand her. He was gone. She had to have the _Enterprise_ under her command again - for Chris Pike, the Admiral who saw something better in her in Riverside.

 

The Federation Council – what was left of it – got a little confused because first it was reported that Captain Jamie Tabitha Kirk had died on board the USS Enterprise and then she hadn’t; and Jamie had never enjoyed diplomacy meetings and having to go to one specifically about her was mortifying and frankly quite useless.

When there was shimmer of things looking up, Bones got stripped of his rank by the Board of Ethics and Humanity for abusing his station. Kirk had immediately gone to Spock for help because if she was getting her ship back, she damned well better have her CMO too. The first hearing was a disaster and to Jamie’s horror, McCoy didn’t object against what he was being accused of. Kirk had enough. There was no way she was going to let one of the men in charge of saving her life get disbarred from the Medical field for doing just that. It took days and she and Spock (who had been called to the stand for witness) gave a defence. Bones’ expression as Spock gave his statement could be classed as comical in any other context. The two men acted, for the most part, as if they would rather the other take the first torpedo into space, wherein reality they were slowly developing as good friends and even better colleagues. Bones was more agitated by Jamie’s interference in it all and Kirk loudly told him that everyone was backing him up. This was perfectly true, the whole of Command were behind them.

Two and a half days after that Bones handed Jamie a letter on a PADD. Doctor McCoy, re-instated as Chief Medical Officer aboard the starship USS Enterprise.

 

 

Scotty stared at her for five seconds, (after she had been cleared of medical surveillance and Bones signed of that he was would keep a watchful eye on her health) then burst into a rant and rave, flapping about and glared, shaking his head.

‘Ye stupid genius, Captain. But I love ye’ and Jamie grinned, bringing the bottle of Earth port wine from behind her back, handing it to her Chief Engineer.

‘Sorry for punching you’ she said. She wasn’t, not really, but the sentiment was the main thing. Scotty looked dubious but like a good Scotsman took the alcohol anyway.

Sulu and Chekov’s responses were much more subdued and for that Jamie was grateful. Chekov smiled brightly (in typical perky Chekov-ness) but his eyes showed something older, wiser and it struck her just how much her youngest command member had grown up since his early deployment. Sulu nodded, a serene smile, with a – ‘It’s good to see you, Kirk’ and Jamie chuckled.

‘You too, Sulu’

She got a very hard poke in the shoulder blade from Uhura (she was about to tell Spock to get his girlfriend to cease abusing her) but the Xenolinguist narrowed her eyes, and stepped eerily gracefully into Jamie’s space, her darker eyes shimmered with tears.

‘Don’t do that again, Jamie, I won’t let you’ and then she added, ‘Captain’.

‘Thanks Uhura’ Jane replied opening her arm out gingerly with half a smirk. Uhura rolled her eyes but hugged Kirk anyhow.

 

The re-Christening of the Enterprise’s maiden voyage was fast approaching and Kirk was to make a speech in front of the entire Federation. In the aftermath of everything, each draft sounded shallow and in no way meaningful enough for the people who had lost their lives.

Luckily, her body almost felt her own again. The first couple of nights after she woke up she found she didn’t fit right in her own skin. As if she had been depersonalised and pumped full to the brim with another soul. She was adjusting and, as per usual, she revised her motto that was to push away problems you fixate on different ones.

Spock made an appearance one afternoon at the precise moment Jamie felt the need to hurl the PADD across the room and he- helped with that by extending it out of her reach as subtly as the half Vulcan could.

‘Do you require any assistance with the speech, Captain?’ he asked and Jamie groaned.

‘Please, call me Jamie’ and it occurred to her that that was the first time she had asked her First Officer to call her anything that wasn’t her title.

‘You did not answer my question, Jamie’ Spock said, faint amusement lacing his words.

‘Thank you, and no. I’ll get it done’

‘Doctor McCoy says you are recovering well’ Spock stated, and if Jamie listened, there was a question behind that, and coming from a Vulcan who saw no need for candy coatings on topics or avoided them altogether, this was weird.

‘He’s right I think’ Jamie, pushing a hand through her short spiked blond tendrils.

‘Actually, Spock… your input might be useful’.

 

The day arrived and Jamie stepped up, looking out to the mass of grey dress uniforms, to her crew standing proud and strong as a unit. She looked down at the speech and took a breath, the words flowing for all to hear - the seventh re-draft.

‘There will always be those who mean to do us harm. To stop them, we risk awakening the same evil within ourselves. Our first instinct is to seek revenge when those we love are taken from us. But that's not who we are... When Christopher Pike first gave me his ship, he had me recite the Captain's Oath. Words I didn't appreciate at the time. But now I see them as a call for us to remember who we once were and who we must be again…And those words: Space, the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Her five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before’.

 

She had lived a life grown into a woman from a messed up family legend and an abusive step-father, died, and was reborn.

Now: for a five-year mission with a crew, a family, worth fighting for.

Captain Jamie Tabitha Kirk: boldly going, where no female, genius repeat offender Captain has gone before.


End file.
